Hari Kari @ Tramway

Compagnie Didier Theron are contemporary ballet. There’s a wanton joy in stating this, a wilful desire to provoke an argument. It’s probably just my medication kicking in, but New Territories 2011 has compelled me to become obsessed with definitions. It feels entirely necessary in a festival like this, when the programming is so eclectic, so imaginative that selecting the right performance can become guess-work on the part of the audience. But if you like Giselle, you’ll like this.

Hara Kiri takes its cue from Japanese ritual suicide: even without the advertised fancy fluorescent stage, it is literally and figuratively dark. Aside from a few brief visits from a gorilla headed soloist, the company dance mostly in unison (like the corps de ballet), occasionally slipping from formation to emphasise the fluidity and grace of their teamwork. And, in common with Ashley Page’s Fearful Symmetries (Scottish Ballet’s signature piece), it takes an idea – in this case tribalism and conformity – and works it into an abstract frenzy. When dance like this succeeds, it allows a theme to be exposed, examined and considered. Emotion is easily evoked through the use of minimalist, repetitious phrases, the quotes from other choreographers, the subtly rising electronic score and the nuanced lighting set. Hara Kiri is a bleak meditation on the last free act of the individual in captivity.

Stunning, exhausting, profound: Didier Theron proves that ballet isn’t just about pointe shoes and swans. Not that there is anything wrong with these, but Theron emphasises how it is a far from old fashioned genre.